Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter

My goal is to read 100 books by the end of 2013.  I just finished book 72.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

Summary (via Goodreads):
In the late 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas "32" Jones were boyhood pals in rural Mississippi.  Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry, the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, single black mother.  Yet for a few months the boys stepped outside of their circumstances and shared a special bond.  But then tragedy struck: Larry took a girl on a date to a drive-in movie, and she was never heard from again.  She was never found and never confessed, but all eyes rested on him as the culprit.  The incident shook the county and perhaps Silas most of all.  His friendship with Larry was broken, and then Silas left town.
More than twenty years have passed.  Larry, a mechanic, lives a solitary existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion.  Silas has returned as a constable.  He and Larry have no reason to cross paths until another girl disappears and Larry is blamed again.  And now the two men who once called each other friend are forced to confront the past they've buried and ignored for decades.

My Opinion:
Considering that I just started this book last night for my book club meeting tonight, I'm very lucky it was a quick read and I finished it with time to spare!
Both Larry and Silas were interesting characters and this book kept my attention.  It's the kind of book that drives me a bit crazy sometimes, where we know everything that is happening and the characters would be able to figure things out much faster if they would just TALK to each other, but it didn't drag on for too long before the story caught up to where the reader already was.
Perfectly neutral about my recommendation... 

Quote from the Book:
"M, I, crooked letter, crooked letter, I, crooked letter, crooked letter, I, humpback, humpback, I. - How southern children are taught to spell Mississippi" ~ this blurb at the beginning of the book explains the title but I'm not sure how it tied in to the story.